“The Tuniit”

By about 8,000 years ago the Arctic environments of North America were as extensive as they are today,
and animal populations had moved northwards to establish themselves on lands and in sea-channels recently freed
from glacial ice. Although ancestral Indian groups made summer excursions northwards across the tundra, probably
following the caribou as Dene and Innu groups have done in recent centuries, it seems likely that they retreated in
winter to the shelter of the forests. There is no indication that any society had developed a year-round adaptation to
life on the tundra, and for the following 3,000 years most of Arctic North America remained unoccupied.

Then, at some time around 5,000 years ago, the picture suddenly and mysteriously changed.
Archaeological remains dating from between 5,000 and 4,500 years ago are found everywhere along the western and
northern coasts of Alaska, across Canada’s arctic archipelago and as far as the barren valleys of northern Greenland.
Moreover, these remains are very uniform, very distinctive and look like nothing that has been found belonging to
earlier periods in the northern forests or subarctic coastal regions of North America. What they do resemble are the
archaeological remains left by Siberian peoples from Lake Baikal to Chukotka: tiny stone tools chipped skillfully
from brilliantly coloured flints; minute needles honed from bird bone, their drilled eyes almost microscopic; harpoon
heads carved from antler or ivory, with a hole to which the hunter attached a line to retrieve his prey from the sea;
bone or ivory lances edged with razor-sharp flint blades.

Their dwellings appear to have been as distinctive as their tools and weapons. Most of the vestiges found
look like the remains of tents; oval patterns of boulders were used to weight the edges of the skin cover, which was
probably stretched over a conical framework of poles and deeply banked with turf and snow for winter insulation.
The ground-plans are small, usually two or three metres on a side, and are divided by a central passage that runs
from front to back. This unique feature is usually about eighty centimetres wide, edged with rocks or upright slabs,
sometimes paved with flagstones, and contains a central hearth. Like the styles of tools and weapons, the
midpassage dwelling resembles those used by Siberian peoples, not only 5,000 years ago but up to the past century,
and by societies as distant as the Saami of northern Scandinavia.

The sudden appearance of this distinctive way of life across the North American Arctic must reflect a
movement of newcomers from Siberia, peoples who either crossed Bering Strait by boat or, more likely, walked
across on the dangerously shifting winter ice. Their Arctic way of life was probably made possible by the Eurasian
inventions that they seem to have introduced to the Americas: the bow and arrow, and finely tailored skin clothing
of the type worn by Siberian people up to the present day. The arrows are evidenced by tiny chipped stone points
with sharp penetrating tips; the clothing by the vast numbers of bone needles, scraps of sewn skin, and by occasional
carvings showing individuals dressed in a costume consisting of high boots, trousers and a double-layered parka
with a high collar. With sophisticated clothing, together with the harpoons, lances, and fish-spears that allowed
them to exploit most Arctic resources, and the small tents that provided portable shelters from the worst of Arctic
weather, these people had everything they needed to travel and hunt on tundra and sea ice. Curiously, archaeology
has not found much evidence of other typical elements of Arctic adaptation: dog bones have been found very rarely,
indicating that like all other hunting peoples they were accompanied by canine colleagues, but also suggesting that
these were very few. The wooden parts of a single kayak-like boat have been found at a site in Greenland,
indicating that these people knew how to make and use watercraft, but again suggesting that few such useful
appliances existed.

Who were these first Arctic explorers? Archaeologists call them “Palaeo-Eskimos” (Old Eskimos), simply
because the country that they occupied was much the same as that occupied by Eskimo-speaking peoples of the past
few centuries. The name is misleading, since it is very unlikely that these people spoke an Eskimo language, or
were direct ancestors of today’s Eskimo’s or Inuit. A far better name is that which was given to them by the Inuit
themselves, who recognized them as a distinctive and strange race. Inuit oral history relates that when their
ancestors arrived in Arctic Canada a few centuries ago they found the country occupied by a tribe of large, strong
and inoffensive strangers whom they called “Tuniit,” and whom the ancestral Inuit soon drove from their lands. The
Tuniit are almost certainly the people whose archaeological remains show almost 5,000 years of occupation in the
Arctic regions of North America, from Bering Strait to the east coast of Greenland and south to the island of
Newfoundland.

-From The Last Imaginary Place: A Human History of the Arctic World by Robert McGhee. Harpers recently called it “enthralling.”